Late Summer Garden

Late summer garden photo

With my planting window for the fall garden rapidly closing and the summer harvest starting to taper off, I thought I'd do a status update for the community garden. 

Squash vine borer hole at the base of my mystery squash

The summer squashes are still producing, despite evidence of both borers and squash bugs in the garden.  They seem to prefer attacking my mystery squash, which seems to be able to take the abuse.  It is also still producing, though I've cut it back a lot in the hopes of squeezing another watermelon out of the season.  The watermelon vines got a little overrun by mystery squash and basil, so they are limping along.  The basil has outperformed my wildest expectations; there is still some left in the garden after two large harvests!

My peppers are still doing well, but are under attack by some sort of stink/soldier beetle.  I've really never had problems with pests on my peppers before, but I suppose there's a first time for everything - especially bugs.

I've got five rounds of carrots in the garden right now.  Some that I planted in the spring, some from my June planting, and three rounds that I planted for the fall. The spring ones can be picked whenever I like, and the June carrots are filling out.  I planted an entire bed for the fall garden, hoping to grow some to leave in the ground for winter like last year.  It's been challenging keeping them watered, even with the weather's cooperation.

The cucumbers are just about finished, but I've been putting off pulling them out because I don't have anything else to plant in their bed and I'd rather not leave the soil bare.  The onion bed is mostly bare, and the soil there is as hard as a rock, even with all the rain we've been having.  The eggplants are just limping along as well, still under attach by the flea beetles.  It looks like I'll get at least two more rosa biancas, though.

Broccoli plant - see the half-eaten leaves?

I transplanted several broccoli back in July, and they have been under pretty serious attack by cabbage moths.  Four or five have survived, but comparing their size and vigor to the ones we had in the spring, I think any heads they produce will be disappointing.  I've transplanted a bunch more and covered them, so we'll see.  According to the almighty HG16 it is too late to plant broccoli, but I think I'd rather plant them and have them not produce anything until spring than leave the soil bare.

Tall tomato plants

I've pulled out four of the tomato plants, hoping the others would have a better chance at ripening their remaining fruit.  We've reached the part of the season when I pick a large bowl of tomatoes every time we go to the garden, and they sit on our table waiting to be turned into sauce.  There was something very odd about the way the tomatoes grew this year - when I look at them from the main path, both beds are shortest on the left, then get progressively taller and bushier as I look to the right.  Why?  I don't know.  Maybe the left gets marginally more light?  Less wind?

A wide row of beans

The green beans R and I planted in July are putting out their first beans!  Yay!  I do like planting these later much better than watching them rust and struggle through the heat and dryness and not produce anything.  It's also nice to have something just coming into crop at this time of year.

The snap peas are up - the first generation are about three inches tall, while the second are about 1 inch.  I've transplanted a whole lot of lettuces into the former potato bed, some simpson and some valerie, and one little romaine has reached survivable size, with more little ones to go in the bed this week.

I'm glad the fall planting is almost finished.  It feels like the fall weather is coming early this year, and I'm anxious to start cleaning and packing things away.  I've also decided to convert more grass to garden at the house, so it will be nice to have some more time to work on that.  (Funny how I'm even looking forward to picking less!)  But more on that project another time.

Almost Done Planting?

I keep thinking I'm almost done planting things at the community garden (and at home!) but then it always seems like there's room for a few more things.  Here's another update on the progress out there.

My potatoes are doing quite well.  Most of the chunks I planted have sprouted at least one plant, and the plants now range in size from about 2 inches (the one I chopped off by accident with a hoe) to about 2 ft above the original soil line.  I've never grown potatoes in the ground before, so when N saw me hilling them up and started asking skeptical questions, I don't think my voice quite had the ring of authority he wanted to hear.  He went and chatted with M, our community garden's helpful guru, who told him I should actually be hilling them even higher.  Suitably reassured, N proceeded to do a much nicer job of it than I had been.  (He really wants potatoes to come out of that garden!)

The tomatoes I transplanted a few weeks ago are doing really well - they've almost doubled their above-ground size since I planted them and several are starting to flower.  As an experiment I decided to cover the ground around them with the plastic bags my leafgro arrived in.  I've seen advice on several university extension websites about mulching tomatoes with plastic to conserve water, suppress weeds, and prevent potentially spore-laden soil from splashing up onto the leaves during heavy rainfall.  So far I have to say I'm really impressed; the soil around my tomato beds is visibly more moist than in other areas of the garden, and the upper leaves (those that grew in after I put the plastic down) are visibly cleaner than the older ones.  Yay!  Now I really must get to staking!

My corn (some of it anyway) has come up.  I think I'll have to go back sometime soon and re-plant in the places where it didn't come up.  I didn't do a very good job of watering it after I planted, or of mixing together the soil and the leaf mulch I put on top of it, so I guess I deserved poor germination rates, but it's important that my rows be filled in, since I only planted two rows and pollination is really important for corn.

I haven't seen any beans (green beans and lima beans) or cucumbers yet.  N helped me put up a trellis for the cucumbers and a net for the beans.  I'll have to post pictures because the whole bean structure is kind of hard to describe and I've already gotten questions about it from several other gardeners out there.  I always laugh a little when people ask what it's for, because I have no idea if it will work and I know it looks crazy.  I needed something around 6 or 7 feet tall and roughly 15 feet long and costing almost nothing to make - surely the kind of challenge that requires a creative and unique solution.  We'll see if it works, I guess.

I also planted pre-sprouted zucchini and butternut squash seeds, and a few yellow summer squash seeds that weren't sprouted yet - I just wanted to get them in the ground in case the baby comes.  (Any day now....) 

As it turns out I have a big blank spot in my community garden plan that was originally intended to be part of a shaded seating / water collection area.  My thinking was that in July when it's 100 degrees and 100% humidity it would be nice to have some shady spot to sit in and nurse the baby between gardening chores.  But there were a lot of problems with that plan, too numerous to mention at 11pm.  I also just happen to have a bunch of old seeds for large vining plants, given to me by my friend T because she doesn't have the space to grow them and wasn't really sure if the seeds were any good.  So, I may be adding some pumpkins and/or winter squash to my plot, depending on how much time passes between now and when the baby arrives.  I've recently discovered the seemingly obvious fact that garden space that has nothing planted in it still has to be weeded, so I am motivated to at least make it all useful!

Nibbled Beanstalks

Recently I posted that I had replanted some of my beans. Well, they came up real nice and looked very happy, until one morning I came out and all the leaves were nibbled off of all but two of the new bean plants. They were such a sad sight!
Being the squirrel lover that I am, you can guess what my first thought was - "Squirrels!!!" But shortly after finding the beans I found a large, dead mouse on the front sidewalk. We have cats, so periodically we find these trophies, almost always laid on the sidewalk next to the driveway (as a treat?) Since that day the remaining two bean plants have gone unharmed, and about half of the nibbled ones have sprouted some new leaves, with no further damage. I hate to admit it, but the squirrels may be innocent in this case.

No Nodules!

My bean plants this year have been pretty disappointing; the yields were smaller than I expected, the leaves were discolored, and they didn't grow nearly as tall as they were supposed to. And, plants that were supposed to last until fall have been slowly dying the last few weeks. Finally, I decided to pull some of them up and replant. And look what I found: no nodules on the roots! Here's what they should look like:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fluffymuppet/2603848846/

(No, I am not fluffymuppet.)

I've always thought that buying commercial innoculant was a waste of money, as everywhere else I've planted beans they've grown quite happily without it. However, I think maybe the high temperatures of the city compost pile killed off the bacteria that produce the nodules and help the plants fix nitrogen. I pulled up several green beans and almost all of my black beans and found the same thing under all of them.

ETA:
Inoculant is a powdery substance that you can put on your legumes just before planting them. It contains a bacterial culture that infects and works symbiotically with legume plants to "fix" nitrogen from the air. Usually I think there is plenty of this bacteria outside for the bean plants to do well, but apparently not in my new plot. Now I have to do an experiment with some inoculant next year!

Harvests

Lest you think my garden brings me nothing but trouble, here are some of the things I've harvested over the last month or so. Mmmm!

Very Productive Weekend

After 2 days of 80 degree weather, I decided it was time to put everything in the garden. The seedlings had been sitting outside for several days and were getting impatient with me. I transplanted tomatoes, bell peppers, eggplants, and one jalapeno plant into their allotted places in the garden.
Also, N finished staking all the bean teepees down so I could plant the beans. I've read that it's better to start beans late than early, so I wanted to wait until it was quite warm. I planted lima beans, green beans, black beans, and two kinds of edamame (soybeans).

I also planted zucchini, yellow squash, and spaghetti squash (in my front garden). I did so much planting that I used almost a full yellow tub of water. Obligingly, it rained off and on all Sunday night and Monday.

I still need to transplant the flowers that I grew from seeds, and I need to do it soon. They are all getting quite impatient.

As I was putting things in, N asked me, "Isn't it a little empty?" I laughed. I must remind him of this question in July.

Anyone Know this Bean Flower?

I noticed this vine last fall with long bean pods all over it and thought it might be good for my back fence. Then this spring it made all these beautiful purple flowers!
So I took my camera for a walk and surreptitiously photographed this family's bean vine from across the street. (I'm sure I looked suspicious in my very large hat with a baby stroller, suddenly stopping to snap pics of their house.) Anyway, I wanted to ask if any of you know what it is.
Then, out of nowhere, I found a whole bunch more of it all over some trees in the wooded area between 51st Ave and the Metro. Invasive?

Sigh. It even smelled good.

Bean Teepee

Check out this awesome support N built for my string beans! It is tall enough that I can just reach the point where it's lashed, so he won't have to pick them for me unless they get really, really tall. He made it from bamboo that we collected at the University of Maryland campus. There was a very large stand of bamboo that's been spreading at least as long as I've been here (6 years now!) and a student group is trying to cut it all down and replace it with native species. Good luck to them! We got enough for several teepees. I'm planning to grow string and lima beans on them.
In the background you can see the new garden bed is finished. I covered it first in cardboard, then in compost. I've been collecting the cardboard for a couple of months now. It is all used, with minimal markings on it. The compost is about 30% stuff that I made and 70% stuff that was made by the city of College Park. I'm also planning to collect a 5-gallon bucket of coffee grounds from the local Starbucks and put that in to help break down the cardboard.